Ellsworth’s girls’ basketball team paired individual offseason development with improved on and off-court chemistry, which sparked a dynamic championship-winning performance at an offseason tournament last week.

For the first time in program history, the Ellsworth Panthers traveled to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point to compete in the annual Ultimate Team Camp, which is a highly competitive three-day tournament that started Tuesday and ended Thursday, June 29.

UW-Stevens Point hosted 40 high school programs from throughout the state, all of which competed in one of three divisions. Ellsworth battled through the gold division, which was designed for middle and smaller-enrollment high school teams.

The Panthers began the three-day tournament with a nearly unblemished 6-1 overall record before winning the gold division’s semifinal and championship games on Thursday. For Ellsworth head coach Jason Janke, who led the Panthers to an 8-1 record at Stevens Point, the tournament was about playing highly competitive basketball and cultivating team chemistry.

“When I took the program over, they had a history of going to the Wisconsin Dells area, but that was more of a bonding deal and the basketball experience wasn’t as intense as what we just did,” Janke said. “Part of any summer program is building culture and community with your team. This allowed us to do both and we saw some high-level basketball. It was a lot of fun.”

Ellsworth competed in the gold division primarily against similarly sized programs, but it wasn’t exclusively those schools. The Panthers occasionally battled against and defeated larger programs, including a 33-25 win against Oconomowoc, a Milwaukee-area Division 1 program with an approximate enrollment of 1,600.

The Panthers cruised to the tournament semifinals where they earned a 58-52 victory to advance to the title game Thursday afternoon. Ellsworth won the championship with a gritty 41-39 victory in overtime against a previously undefeated Michigan-based school.

Ellsworth earned the hardware in dramatic fashion, as Morgan Halverson corralled a loose ball in the closing seconds of overtime and dished it to Ava Brookshaw, who buried a game-winning shot at the buzzer. Coach Janke spoke about how the experience will benefit his girls this year.

“If you’re in a tight situation or a game that is coming down to the wire, now they’ve all kind of been there,” Janke said. “Before Molly (Janke) and Morgan (Halverson) had been there with a lot of AAU, but now everybody has. That was one of the neat things about Thursday. Ava Brookshaw made a game-winner in overtime to win the division championship.”

Halverson’s game-winning assist to Brookshaw in the championship was one of many elite plays she made at the Ultimate Team Camp in Stevens Point. Halverson, who is going into her junior year this fall, is a longtime AAU player who continues to develop each season.

“Morgan Halverson had a really good week and she jumped a bit,” Jason Janke said. “Everyone who watches us would expect that she’s going to do some good things, but she really made a leap. Some of our seniors had a rebirth over the last few weeks and played really well over there too.”

Coach Janke was highly encouraged by what his girls demonstrated on the floor but may have been even more impressed by their leadership efforts with younger players and the cultivation of team chemistry.

Whether it was Brookshaw, Halverson, Molly Janke or another veteran, the experienced players helped younger athletes acclimate to the competition level and welcomed them to a locker room that values camaraderie and friendship.

“We offered the open spots to our younger group and one of them took it, so we had 10 kids,” Janke said. “All credit goes to our returning kids for the culture building. We had Morgan, who is a junior, and six seniors there. They did a great job. You couldn’t have coached them and told them how to treat a kid and done any better job. It was just constant fun for them.”

Jason Janke wasn’t the only person who felt as if the chemistry was developing. Among the players who saw the floor regularly at the Ultimate Team Camp was one of Ellsworth’s freshmen. Janke spoke about the feedback he got from a younger player’s family.

“The chemistry was amazing,” Jason Janke said. “One of the freshman parents texted me to say that it was the coolest experience her daughter has had and that she couldn’t believe the way the varsity girls took care of her daughter. She gave huge kudos to those players.”

In recent years, Ellsworth has shifted away from regular scrimmaging to individual drills and improvement. Whether it’s Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) play or just putting up shots in open gym, Coach Janke has encouraged his players to improve throughout the summer.

“We’re trying to get individual work done and a lot of our kids are playing AAU,” Janke said. “We’re encouraging them to get in the gym. We’re trying to be there for them when they want to get in there and work on some skills. We’ve scrimmaged a couple of times, but a lot of them are playing on the weekend, so we don’t want to burn their legs out too much.”

Ellsworth is slated to continue offseason programming throughout the summer with an array of development options leading up to the season opener in November.